The waitresses at Paradise Exiles: Fabrizia, the Architect

Fabrizia was an exception among the waitresses at Exiles, as she was neither looking stunning nor sweet, but very interesting. She was a small blonde, maybe 165 cm. Her body was not totally  perfect, the legs a bit too short, the ass a bit too big, the boobs a bit to small, but still very nice. But her face was a different story. It was not classically beautiful, but very attractive and very interesting. You saw right away that you had a person in front of you, with whom you could have stimulating conversations. Her smile was an invitation to start to talk.

All waitresses at Exiles have to smile when they serve you a dish. The smile immediately stops when the dish hits the table. Its task is to compensate you for the exasparated look the bartenders sometimes give you when you order. There seems to be a fear that someone could rob them of the beer.Therefore all managing bartenders had a revolver tattooed to their hip. That was actually a very good idea, because that way they always had it on them when they may need it, they probably thought.

I purposely misinterpreted Fabrizia's smile, the serving gesture, as an invitation to start to talk. As she was blonde I asked her whether she was Turkish. That may sound counterintuitive, but at least in Istanbul lots of women are blonde. She said no, she was Italian and her pronunciation confirmed it. There are lots of Italian blondes, too, but I would not have thought, that an Italian would work in Malta. I was hoping to impress her with a Turkish carpet that I once bought, but that wouldn't work now.

So I asked her, why she worked in Malta. She said she needed to improve her English for her work. I asked her what she was doing and she told me that she was finishing her studies as an architect and wanted to work in an international architecture firm. That was great, I thought, because I could start a conversation about majolica designed by the renowned Italian architect Gio Ponti, especially his majolica family “Le mie donne” which contains pictures of a women called Fabrizia, too. But she did not know Gio Ponti. She was just too young, I think she told me, she was twenty three and Ponti had passed away about thirty years ago. So that line of conversation did not work.

I tried something more basic. I told her that two days ago I overheard a conversation of a regular guest who apparently was an editor of an architecture journal and who had promised another guest, a young British architecture student, to introduce him to Maltese architects. I decribed her, how that editor looked like and advised her to approach her when she came again. But Fabrizia told me that she did not want to work in Malta as an architect, as Malta was not international enough. She wanted to work in an international firm, in well known cities like Paris, London or NYC. I saw no way, to contradict this argument, so that line of conversation didn't work, either.

So I finally mentioned my friend Vera, who owned an architecture firm in Vienna. As far as I remembered Vera used to hire graduates right from university. So I suggested this to Fabrizia. I pointed out, that while Vienna was no Paris or London, it was a good 2^nd tier capital and therefore a reasonable place to start and then to move on to one of the cities of her desire. But Fabrizia remarked correctly, that she did not speak German, so working in a local Viennese architecture firm was out of the question. Again she was right, and it was impossible to start a conversation with her, that would be meaningful to her.

© GG 2012    

All content purely fictional, any similarities to real persons, places, firms, etc. are purely coincidental.